Our Stop

by Laura Jane Williams

  He wished there was somebody else in bed beside him.

  He wished he was in bed with his best friend, in a house they owned, maybe even with rings on their fingers.

  Daniel wanted what his mum and dad had had. He wanted it so terribly badly. And not just with anyone.

  He wanted it with the love of his life.

  14

  Nadia

  Nadia had a feeling all day that something wasn’t right. A sort of ominous heaviness in her tummy, and an anxiousness that made her snap in the lab more than once.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she told her assistant, when she found herself losing her temper over the reconfiguration of a stubborn bit of code that wouldn’t quite translate to what they were working on. ‘In fact, you know what? I know we’re on a deadline here but let’s take a break. Twenty minutes. I’ll come back with cake.’

  Nadia grabbed her phone and left the office building, heading towards the market to her second-favourite bakery in the city. Her first-favourite bakery was the cupcake shop on Church Street in Stoke Newington, down the road from where she lived. If you got them at the right point in the day it was possible to get almost a whole quarter of a full-sized red velvet cake, with so much icing it needed two cups of tea to help wash it down. On a less frosting-based day, Nadia liked the cookies at her second-favourite bakery, which were inspired by New York’s Levain bakery – the cookies there had been invented by an Olympic swimmer who needed a way to get in as many calories as possible in a short amount of time. They were dense and light, full of chocolate chips but so moreish it never seemed like enough. They cost almost six pounds each and so it wasn’t so much the fat content as the price that put Nadia off going too often.

  Typically, she treated herself right before her period which – ah. Nadia pulled up the period tracker app on her phone, knowing before it told her that she was definitely pre-menstrual. Yup. The flashing dot told her to expect a bleed tomorrow, and suddenly her dark mood and short temper and desire to both burn the world to the whole damned ground and eat innumerable calories as she did so made sense.

  It was later, right as she got changed into a different top, putting on extra deodorant and wondering where her Tic Tacs were, that Nadia felt a twinge in her tummy that meant her period was a day early. She hated that feeling – the feeling of a period coming before she was ready – and instantly knew she’d have an awful night, wishing she was at home. She hated that she felt obliged to go because of this stupid set-up Gaby had arranged. She was in no mood to flirt and be coy and diminish her accomplishments until she got a read on the extent to which this guy might feel threatened. The set-up was all cute and lovely in theory, but she felt gross, and really was more determined to find out who the man on the train was than go tonight. Who knew what kind of guy was waiting to meet her at the Sky Garden? Although, to be fair, who knew what kind of guy was waiting to meet her on the train. Urgh. She looked at herself in the mirror.

  Come on babe, she willed herself. Show up to your own life.

  Meet you there, she texted Gaby. Gonna walk off a bad day. My period came early.

  Gaby texted back, Hurry! The poor guy is a bag of nerves! It’s cute, but also get here and put him out of his misery!

  Nadia sent back the running girl emoji, signalling a pace she didn’t feel. Her friend was only trying to be good to her, she knew.

  She was about thirteen minutes into the twenty-minute walk when her mood lifted. The fresh air blew away her cobwebs and gave her back some perspective on her life. Nothing bad was about to happen: the feeling she’d had all day was the simple biology of her menstrual cycle. She was about to walk in to a beautiful venue with a summer view of the London skyline, her two closest friends in the world there with an open bar and a potentially handsome man. Even if nothing came of tonight, she’d read in Get Your Guys! that refusing to practise flirting with men you didn’t fancy was like saying you’d learn your lines only once you got on stage. That book advocated flirting with everyone, always, everywhere, just to be polite and friendly and getting used to being a little nervous, so that when the true man of your life is finally in front of you, you don’t blow it.

  Yes, Nadia thought to herself. I will go and practise my flirting. She lined up some witty things to say, imagining herself smiling and charming and drinking and laughing. She would have as good a time as she had set her mind to, and in the half-mile walk in the sunshine, she’d decided she’d have a lovely time.

  And then she saw him.

  Awful Ben.

  The night she broke up with him – an act that took more courage than anything she had ever known, and a full three weeks to build up to – she sat and took it as he said horrible, hurtful things to her.

  He told her she was worthless, that nobody would ever want her, that she was broken and didn’t know how to love anyway.

  She’d called him a cab and knew she would never hear from him again: that his proud Brazilian blood would mean she was dead to him, which suited her just fine. She needed to not see him. He worked just outside of London, meaning the chances of passing him on any day were minimal; but, of course, though London is big, the daily paths most people take are small, and just as the posh people knew Notting Hill like the back of their hands, and ad execs knew every twist and turn of Soho, single and hipster mid-thirties professionals knew by heart the streets of Spitalfields and Commercial Road. Of course if Awful Ben was to come into town for a date, this was the part he’d come to. And it looked like a date too – or even like he could be with a girlfriend.

  While her thoughts were drifting ahead to the summer party, Nadia had glanced up from her feet only to experience the horrifying realization that her emotionally manipulative and downright disordered-personalitied ex-boyfriend was stood before her – she had literally walked into him.

  She hadn’t seen him since she’d live-tracked his Uber home on her app, making sure he got back to where he lived before she took the photo of them out of the frame on her bedside table and cut it into tiny little pieces.

  She could see him saying something, but she couldn’t hear the words. Her body was ice cold and it felt like not enough air was reaching her lungs. Awful Ben was still moving his mouth. It was like time had frozen and sped up, both at the same time. She blinked several times in quick succession and felt sick and suddenly her tummy hurt.

  ‘You are in a world of your own,’ he said.

  It was weird how he said it. It was an accusation, but also said totally neutrally. It felt aggressive to Nadia, but the woman on his arm – a beautiful, radiant woman, with full cheeks and kind eyes – smiled, as if that must be a private joke between them. What had he said about her? Did this woman on his arm know what he was capable of yet?

  ‘I … I don’t want to talk to you. Excuse me.’

  Nadia pushed past the two of them, stepping out into the road to do so and only narrowly missing a cyclist who screamed at her, ‘Fucking hell! Watch it!’

  She heard Awful Ben say something about the ex I told you about, poor thing, and she remembered, in that moment, how he’d said that to Nadia the night they first met, about the girlfriend before her. She was never well.

  Nadia kept walking, her head spinning, with a dogged refusal to look back at him. She knew he was watching. Knew he was furious she’d caused even the tiniest bit of a scene.

  Crazy, that was the word he had used, all that time ago. He said his ex was crazy. And now Nadia felt crazy too. And it was awful, horrible – she’d bet her whole life that the woman who was now hearing about his crazy ex would one day herself be crying in the street near a work party being called crazy by him too, when the only thing crazy was how Awful Ben picked away at the women he said he loved and tortured them into thinking there was something wrong with them.

  But the problem was him.

  It made Nadia want to scream. She wanted to scream, and run back down the road to tell the woman to save herself and dump him now. But if she did that, she really would seem
crazy. She wouldn’t have listened to anyone, least of all an ex, if she’d been warned. She would have thought that whoever tried to tell her not to pursue a relationship with him was jealous. That’s what they teach us, Nadia thought to herself, miserably. They teach us that other women are the competition so we don’t talk to each other honestly and figure out that they’re all fucking fuckers.

  She reached the Sky Garden and looked up. There was no way she was going in. She was crying, she realized – and, as she fished her phone out of her pocket, trembling a little too. She called Emma.

  ‘Babe, where are you?’ answered Emma. ‘I’ve seen this guy Gaby has for you. He’s cute. He’s your type. Like, fucking game on, babe!’

  Nadia’s voice wobbled as she said, ‘I’m outside. I just saw Ben.’ And then she sobbed hysterically.

  ‘Fuck. Okay. I’m coming. Stay right there. I’m coming.’

  ‘The table in the corner, please,’ Emma said to the hostess of the chic hotel. Emma had a theory that if in doubt, go to a hotel bar because they’re always emptier than pubs or stand-alone restaurants. She was right. Nadia felt safe here. It was half empty and they could sit at the back, out of the way, their own little world within a world.

  Gaby was with them. The three settled into a corner booth and Emma ordered them the salted caramel chocolate brownie with two scoops of ice cream, the sweet and salty popcorn, and a large pot of peppermint tea with honey on the side. Everything was to share.

  ‘There was so much I thought I would say to him if I ever saw him again,’ Nadia said, playing with the label on the bottle of water at the table. ‘And I just froze. Urgh.’ A tear rolled down her cheek. ‘He looked so smug too – like he knew he’d caught me in a weak moment or something.’

  ‘What did she look like?’ Emma asked, intrigued.

  ‘Question vetoed,’ said Gaby, giving her daggers. ‘It literally doesn’t matter. He’ll do the same to her.’ Gaby had known something was off with Awful Ben almost immediately after Nadia had started going out with him; she and Nadia had had their only fight over it and after they’d made up Gaby knew she had to let her friend make her own mistakes. ‘It happens to a lot of women at some point.’

  The tea arrived, and the women fell silent as the waitress unloaded her tray and told them dessert would be right with them.

  ‘You don’t have to be okay, you know,’ Gaby said, once she’d gone. ‘I’d want to cry and scream too.’

  Nadia nodded. ‘I hate that you don’t get over someone like, once. You have to do it again and again and again, every time you think of them.’

  ‘You’ve been doing really well,’ Emma offered. ‘You’ve been lighter, happier. More positive. You’ve been in The New Routine to Change Your Life!’

  ‘And now I’m taking a huge leap back,’ Nadia said, miserably. ‘I’m so mad that he can control me! Still!’ She burst into tears again.

  ‘It’s not a leap back, not at all.’ Emma soothed her. ‘Babe – healing isn’t linear. And look how far you’ve come. You were able to process all that craziness that happened, and then tell us and process it again, and seeing him – it’s another way to process it. Because it was real. What he did to you, how awful he was – it was all real. I promise you: none of us is fucking up like we think we are.’

  Nadia welled up again, and nodded. It was all she could do, nod, like an external manifestation of the internal realization that yup, he really had stolen not just the six months of her life that they’d dated, but the six months afterwards too, which she’d needed just to make sense of how she’d let it happen. How she’d become his victim. She was a strong, positive, go-getting woman and it shamed her deeply that she’d let a man put out her flame.

  ‘Stop it,’ said Emma. ‘I can see you beating yourself up again. None of this is your fault. It’s all him. You are a survivor, and he can’t hurt you anymore, okay? You control this ship.’

  The dessert arrived, with three forks, and the women picked the edges off the brownie.

  ‘I’m going to order the cheesecake too,’ said Nadia, sadly.

  Emma winked at her. ‘Good idea.’ And then, ‘Darling, you know what? Why don’t the two of us go on an adventure this weekend? We could go to Soho Farmhouse. Sleep in a massive bed. See some celebs. Row a boat on that tiny pond. Let’s get out of London, shall we?’

  Nadia thought about it as she stirred in the honey to her tea. It sounded good to be anywhere but here. To be somebody else, somewhere else.

  ‘Would I have to talk to anyone except you?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Would I have to do things to be a fun friend or can I wallow and feel bruised and sad?’

  ‘You can feel bruised and sad.’

  ‘Okay. Yes. I’d like that.’

  Emma put her arm around her friend. ‘I’d like that too.’

  Gaby held up her hands. ‘Thanks for the invite, guys!’

  Emma didn’t miss a beat. ‘You’re at your mum’s this weekend!’

  ‘I know, but you could still have asked me.’

  Nadia said, ‘You’re at Marie-Jean’s this weekend? That’s nice. Tell her I say hi.’

  Gaby said, ‘I will do. I’m jealous of your plans now, though.’

  ‘The perks of survival,’ said Nadia. ‘When you cry, your friends whisk you away.’

  ‘Only if you have good friends.’

  ‘Yeah. God, can I date you instead?’

  Emma laughed. ‘Join the queue,’ she said.

  ‘Wouldn’t it just be so much easier?’ Nadia leaned in for the last part of the brownie. ‘You guys don’t get upset at who earns more money or feel emasculated if somebody else picks up the bill. You don’t have to wait a beat too long to text back because it’s not masculine to be too eager, and god, can you imagine fucking a woman? Like, worshipping a vagina instead of thinking it is vaguely gross and something to be embarrassed about? That’s the thing I envy about lesbians: everybody is invested in how great the pussy is. I’ve been with too many guys who sort of tolerate it, because it’s the thing that they get to dip into. But they don’t truly love it, or understand it. Imagine dating somebody who actually understands how periods work, instead of having a vague knowledge that it means mood swings and blood? I just think that would be beautiful.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Gaby, her attention turning to the waitress. ‘Can we get the cheesecake too, please?’ she smiled at her.

  The waitress nodded.

  Emma said: ‘Me too. Like, I wonder what it would be like not to have to perform womanhood, as well.’

  ‘Like being genderqueer?’ Nadia said.

  ‘Yeah!’ said Emma. ‘I guess. The boxes of “male” and “female” are so narrow: if you’re a bloke, it’s best to behave this way and if you’re a chick, it’s best to behave this other way. What if there was no such thing as man and woman?’

  ‘I think I’d still love the dick,’ Nadia laughed.

  Gaby said, ‘I don’t know if you would, though. I’m not telling you how you feel, but do you love dick because mostly that’s what you’ve assumed about yourself? What about a man with a vagina, or a woman with a penis?’

  ‘A lesbian with a good dildo?’ Emma added.

  ‘My auntie Linda wouldn’t know how to address the Christmas cards!’ Nadia said, laughing.

  ‘She could try simply using your names!’

  ‘No Mr and Mrs, or whatever?’

  ‘Exactly. That’s some antiquated patriarchal bullshit anyway.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Nadia, as the waitress delivered the cheesecake.

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ Emma said to her.

  Nadia liked this. Sitting with her friends and talking and being safe and not judged and everyone trying to understand themselves a little better. This was her happy place. She just wished she didn’t only ever remember to take stock of it after she’d been sad. You don’t need a romance to have a romantic life, she thought, watching her two friends smile and laugh together. She felt so
lucky to have them.

  15

  Nadia

  Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire was a green, leafy space populated with a lush restaurant and spa area in converted barns. Emma flashed her black membership card at the gates – a membership that was a few thousand pounds a year but guaranteed a table next to a handful of minor celebrities and bankers-turned-creative-investors who thought they were somehow bohemian because they’d put the cash injection into an actress’s website, or a musician’s charity event.

  Nadia and Emma were in cabin thirty-four, and after unloading the car they took their ‘house bikes’ down the smooth tarmac lanes, enjoying the quiet as they zoomed up and down, simply to zoom up and down. Nadia knew the room should have been at least five hundred pounds a night (though Emma insisted she’d got a deal of some sort and so Nadia only owed her two hundred for the weekend, which seemed suspicious to Nadia, like Emma was being nonchalant about the difference because she earned more), so it was ironic that from the outside each cabin had been modelled to look like a tin hut on a Siberian roadside. Still. The sheets were thick cotton and there was a real fire and the balcony hovered over a small river, making it easy to whittle away a solid thirty minutes or more just staring at water. And it was peaceful. Really, really peaceful.

  ‘Babe, how do you feel about a facial?’ Emma said, when they sat outside with steaming cups of Earl Grey. ‘You know how your skin gets when you’ve been crying.’

  It was true – Nadia got even more acne along her jaw when she was stressed or upset and since giving up milk she’d been doing so well. Her skin had been clear for two weeks now, and she’d be damned if Awful Ben would be the reason it didn’t stay that way. To anyone listening, what Emma said could’ve sounded catty, like she was some kind of frenemy, but Nadia knew she meant well. She supposed Emma couldn’t control her running into Awful Ben, but she could control sixty minutes of pure indulgence by a woman who knew how to extract blackheads.